Here is a thing I watched recently. It first aired in December 2018, but I was late catching up with it. I'm glad I did, though...
TV: Brexit: The Uncivil War
US funnyman Tom Lehrer famously remarked ‘Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize’. This expression of incredulity has chimed with me a lot recently because I want to write something about Brexit. As a writer drawn to both satire and drama, however, I’m still unsure how to do it.
How can you satirise the shambles of Brexit? The cast on the right is essentially a series of evil and privileged PG Wodehouse characters. Equally, how can you dramatise it? By examining how the left are directionless and treating it as a tragedy about lost ideals?
Events move very quickly, too. It’s a hard subject to pin down.
So I was fascinated to finally see James Graham’s comedy-drama, Brexit: The Uncivil War, first screened on Channel 4 and now available on All 4. I was intrigued by what he’d write.
Graham’s script largely focuses on one element of Brexit, namely the role played by maverick political strategist and Leave campaigner Dominic Cummings (played by Benedict Cumberbatch with a Bobby Charlton combover).
During the story, viewers see Cummings lured back into the political fold to form the official Leave Campaign team. Then Cummings and his team win the designation as the official Leave Campaign Party, they get Michael Gove and Boris Johnson onboard, and Cummings finds a way to hack the political system using digital technology to micro target and engage disengaged voters. From then on, the Leave and the Remain campaigns slug it out until Cumming’s pyrrhic Brexit victory is secured.
The 90-minute show opens with Cummings theorising in an office storeroom in a straight-to-camera piece. Intercut with this are scenes of him being interviewed for jobs, where he is introduced as the man behind Brexit. The opening titles then present a potted history of how the UK joined the EU and take viewers up to David Cameron announcing his referendum on the UK retaining membership.
It’s a tidy piece of writing. Viewers meet the central character of Cummings and get a taste of his unorthodox ways and behaviour, and anyone not up to speed with how we got to Brexit is brought up to date. Graham’s script is excellent at using TV shorthand in this way. And it needs to be because, defined timeframe or not, there’s a huge amount of ground to cover and many players to introduce over its 14-month tale.
Another time-saving device Graham employs is the use of captions to introduce key players. So actors Simon Paisley Day and John Heffernan secretly meet in the National Gallery to plot, and on-screen titles tell us the former is ‘Douglas Carswell… UKIP’s only MP… Leave’ and the former is ‘Matthew Elliott… Political lobbyist… Leave’.
Next, viewers are introduced to Corrie ex Lee Boardman as Aaron Banks (‘UKIP donor… Leave…’) and the man whose political career he bankrolls, Nigel Farage (‘Former UKIP Leader… Very Leave…). This is a smartly written scene full of character information in shorthand form.
Banks, dressed in shorts and a polo shirt, is attending a garden party at a plush country seat. The rest of the guests are in formal dinner wear and sup champagne. In contrast, he grabs a can of lager, then calmly watches the other guests run for cover when a helicopter carrying Farage lands in the grounds.
An uncouth Farage interrupting a society event is a nice metaphor for his bulldozer presence in British politics. In a later cute scene-cum-metaphor, Farage and Banks are later seen watching the TV as they lose the official Leave Campaign Party designation. The TV, the only light source illuminating the room, is turned off and both men are left sitting on a sofa together, clueless and in the dark.
There are also a couple of other funny scenes that deserve noting. One involves Gove and Johnson spying one another on opposite balconies at the opera, and the other sees Remain Campaign Director Craig Oliver on a conference call with a horrifyingly jocular David Cameron and a serpent-like Peter Mandelson.
There are serious moments, though, heralded by intentional changes of pace.
The first happens when the rival campaigns are officially launched amid a montage of news footage and various politicians repeating their respective campaign mantras. Viewers then see Remain Campaign Director Oliver confused about why their campaign message isn’t landing at a focus group. Then one frustrated woman from a poor constituency invites him to ‘Come to where I’m from’, before explaining how economic uncertainty is not a concern for people who are already deprived. In one of the few emotional outbursts in Graham’s script, she continues, shouting: ‘I'm sick of feeling like I am nothing. Like I know nothing!'
A similar moment to this occurs when Cummings, Elliott and Carswell visit a rundown estate to meet one of the latter’s constituents. The unemployed man they visit tells the trio ‘No-one from a political party has knocked on that door since the 1980s.’
Both moments offer a beautiful articulation of the anger, frustration and abandonment felt by people neglected by many of the current political class.
The other serious moment occurs following the murder of Jo Cox MP. Viewers see this news broadcast on TV sets at the HQs of both campaigns. A sombre black tile appears on the screen giving the facts about her death.
The next scene sees Cummings and Oliver on opposite platforms at Moorgate Tube Station. The two go for a pint and they discuss the day’s events, wondering whether they're creating a politics that is 'Unsophisticated, uncivilised and, worst of all, unkind' and ‘Feeding a toxic culture where nobody trusts or believes anything.’
It’s another genuine moment of reflection in a fast-moving script.
The drama closes with polling day and the result. There’s also a neat post-script scene set in 2020. This shows Cummings being asked about his role in Brexit in front of a committee investigating the legalities of the campaign. Cummings argues his vision to crash the political system and reboot it was not flawed. But the politicians were. He argues: ‘You rebooted the same operating system of self-serving and small-thinking bullshit.’
It’s a thought-provoking ending, particularly when considering how things have moved on since this drama was first aired in December 2018.
It's a fabulous piece of telly.
